The English language is preparing to mourn the loss of one of its most agreeable similes as painters finally apply the last lick of paint to the Forth Bridge.
For well over 100 years, chaps armed with buckets and brushes have scaled the famous structure in a Sisyphean endeavour to keep it spick and span.
Now, however, after a …

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PR

It's all PR BS I'm afraid. I was told by somebody on the project a few years back that it was a myth that the bridge was constantly being painted. Futhermore he said he could cite periods where no painting was done on the bridge at all for some considerable time.

The whole myth got started because painting the structure is so complex that it obviously takes a very log time and somebody stated that it took so long that by the time the painters reached the far side they would have to start again at the other. There was never any official confirmation of this.

Indeed I remember a few years ago it being a news story (probably in the Scotsman) that the bridge was falling to bits because the painting had been stopped. They can't have it both ways - either the painting was stopped or it has been continuous since the bridge was erected.

Title

Confusion abounds

Evidently we are all having a quiet day. I thought it was "Forth Rail Bridge". So does the Visitors Centre at forthbridges.org.uk. Wikipedia allows both "Forth Bridge" and "Forth Rail Bridge", but what do they know?

3rd Bridge

George IV Bridge does not cross the Firth of Forth. It's an elevated street in Edinburgh. You can't count it just because it's in Scotland you know.

There are two bridges at Queensferry, the Forth Bridge and the Forth Road Bridge. Although they are planning another road bridge. Further inland there are two more bridges although I think they cross the river Forth rather than the Firth of Forth. Those are the Kincardine on Forth Bridge and the Clackmananshire Bridge which bypasses Kincardine to the north.

Another (topical) political one:

Wet Paint

I'm glad to hear it will be finished, I have seen a few TV articles in recent years where the workers talked about the new longer-lasting paints and also commented on the myth that the bridge has needed a "Wet Pain" sign since it was built.

Like paying for PFI

Reminds me of a backup once

Reminds me of my last company, when the tape drive broke on the software production server. Someone decided that we couldn't buy a new one, because the new SAN took all the money and it had an excellent new tape drive in. I was instructed to run a cron job each night to copy the source code repository to the SAN which was in a different building (The backup software couldn't backup to the SAN).

It took just over 25 hours to copy the entire repository over the internal network, so the next night the job started before the first had finished. I can't remember how long this nonesense went on for before they decided to buy a new production server and just connect it directly to the SAN. Whatever, it certainly saved the cost of a tape drive :)

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P - lease....

This is old news and coupled with this the scaffolding is not down for three months. So it is not finished yet and it is old news that it is finished. The News in this country is tripe with a capital T. Have people forgotten that our government has been engaged in torture! This means if they can do it to them, they can do it to us.

@Marco Mieshio

If I understand your post correctly, we should not be concerned with anything other than just one instance of something that has probably been going on in some form or another for a long time. There is no justification in your mind, for people to indulge in a bit of humour combined with non-political interest.